It’s hard in some cases to determine whether someone murdered someone, or stole from someone, or committed fraud, etc. That doesn’t mean we just throw up our hands and say it’s foolish to ever try to determine whether any rules have been broken.
Fraud is a particularly good example here, because it literally involves making reasonable interpretations of someone’s speech. And I’m pretty sure you can’t weasel your way out of a fraud conviction because of technicalities with the way you phrased something.
I'm not saying FB and it's completely opaque outsourced subcontracted byzantine soulless lowest-bidder sweatshop moderation system is better (or somehow will be better), but it's not like the US criminal/justice system is flawless.
Mark should have either said "we will only take down illegal content" or "we're going to do what we want to maintain appropriate content".
The first would be much easier because, with the 2nd, they will be the decision maker on everything and will get dragged into every decision that's political (all of them?).
And corporations are immoral fuckwits only concerned with survival, regardless of the ethics (or lack thereof) of the people involved.
To read Facebook's policy literally, police departments warning about unlawful behavior would be "inciting violence" because they of course have the monopoly of violence behind them. Even posting the law, and saying that someone is violating it, would be "inciting violence" under Twitter's definition. They don't draw any distinction between lawful and unlawful violence, and every law on the books, whether it's re-selling loose cigarettes or catching too many fish, carries the threat of an officer with a gun using force against the alleged violator.
This is all an interesting thought experiment but in practice, I'm sure this policy will be used to punish people the moderation team doesn't like, and will be ignored for people that they do like.
I’m not one of those “taxation is theft” people, but the state’s monopoly on violence is a real thing, and violence is implicit in every government law. When Warren proposed to create a wealth tax, implicit in that assertion is that the government would collect it from people by force if necessary.
Facebook’s policy on violence, applied to government speakers, is like people who eat meat being squeamish about hunting. Where do you think your food comes from? Likewise, what do you think is the basis for all these things you think the government should make people do?
Maybe you should read up on how the Australian government handled gun control: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_of_Australia#2017_Nati...
Hint: their campaign poster said "Now's the time to hand it in without penalty".
You're comparing two very different things here - disingenuously. One in which the president _literally threatens force_, the other which says the government will take ownership of guns.
If you can make that argument with a straight face, I take my hat off to you.
Listen to Beto’s tone and the crowd’s reaction. “Hell yes, we’ll [accept your AR-15 in a buy-back]” would not have had the same rhetorical impact because that’s not what he meant. The crowd cheered because they knew what he meant.
Further listen to his definition of a gun he’ll take. First off the AR-15 is not and never has been used on a battlefield, it’s a civilian gun. Most people don’t own M16’s due to the licensing required. Second is they want to take guns that can be used to kill people, this is all guns. He is frothing at the mouth to take guns that look scary.
1. You'll be asked to hand in guns
2. You can choose not to. You can say it's in the trash. You threw it away. Whatever.
The US gov't will need a warrant to come in and search property. All for a gun that you might own? But that you now know is an "extra" crime to use? That's not going to happen. Manpower, cost, trouble, the chance of escalation - it's not worth it. So yes, keep it locked away if you so choose.
I get your point, but it's an assumption to say that the police are going to _force entry and remove everyone's guns_. That will not ever happen.
I just want to disclaim that I genuinely don't care about guns whether people keep them or not. After being in the UK with acid attacks, keep em. No horse in this race. Just do not understand why people are so determined to say that you'll have them forcefully stolen from you, when just a tiny bit of thinking - and precedent! - shows you that it's not going to happen.
If that law is changed to include guns that are now legal, why would you think the ATF won't seize those guns too?
Not long ago the ATF determined that certain airsoft guns were "machine guns". They pretty quickly asked the seller for a list of customers, followed up with each and seized them.
[1]https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/12/04/excl...
Why would you expect laws making guns illegal would be any different than the laws we already have making drugs illegal?
"In that case, I think that there would be a visit by law enforcement to recover that firearm and to make sure that it is purchased, bought back, so that it cannot be potentially used against somebody else," O'Rourke told the Morning Joe co-hosts. [1]
I certainly wouldn't expect we'd be sending unarmed law enforcement to a recalcitrant gun owner's home to force him to surrender his firearms.
https://www.newsweek.com/beto-orourke-gun-buyback-assault-we...
In the first case, if I choose not to resist (which I definitely won't if I believe I'm in the right and I trust the review/court system), there's much less risk of direct bodily harm, permanent injury, or death, even if I get jailed. If violence happens during the arrest, presumably that will be considered unusual and the cops will be at risk of being in trouble from that, so they have an incentive to not be violent. In the first case, if I'm wrongfully accused, I get to have my day in court, have a professional represent me, and present my evidence to a judge before anything more irreversible happens to me than losing some time. In the second case, I have no recourse if a cop abuses their power because they're reckless or have it out for me specifically. In the second case, it's already established that direct violence is expected, and because it won't be seen as unusual, the cops have little need to restrain themselves.
> Now's the time to hand it in without penalty
What do you suppose is implied?
It really doesn't matter, anyway, because there a regular and frequent shootings at the Chapel Street clubs.
I wonder how you would have it. Do you propose disallowing use of force entirely? If so, how do we deal with noncompliance?
> When Warren proposed to create a wealth tax, implicit in that assertion is that the government would collect it from people by force if necessary.
Strictly speaking, as a government, you won't need to collect a wealth tax by force. The government's monopoly on violence is inevitably bundled with provision of some privately-valuable services, such as managing and enforcing property rights. People selfishly want their rights to be enforced in a fair and predictable way, so they will find it in their interest to pay up.
For example, you could argue that the murder of the Gracchi was the beginning of the end for the Roman republic: once it became clear that the government was no longer playing by the rules and might really did make right, the republic’s legitimacy was fatally weakened. Before long you get a generation of civil war and the end of the republic.
Having a stable monopoly on violence is generally in the involved parties' shared best interest, so a Schelling point (perhaps weighted by some expectation of shared future benefits) is as much of a source of "legitimacy" as anyone needs. When that process of agreeing on a single Schelling point fails due to excess ambiguity - well, then you might have some real trouble on your hands.
My real point, rather than trying to articulate a complete theory of statehood in some cockamamie HN post, is to push back against the common formulation that finds the source of state power in state violence. The real story is meaningfully more complex.
When Weber is talking about the state being defined by a monopoly on violence, he’s talking about the definition of the modern state as opposed to the pre-modern, not an inherent feature of all human organization and government. The medieval king, for example, certainly didn’t hold a monopoly on violence.
He did indirectly, through the concept of divine right. This power was so immense, that a single king could wage war against an entire religion, as in the Crusades. If that isn't monopoly on violence, I don't know what is.
Anyway, not sure what you’re arguing against: the divine right of kings is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about when I say legitimacy.
We hear something like “the state is a monopoly on violence” very frequently, but without the idea’s original limited context as part of the definition of the modern state. It helps it go unexamined that our personal experience is only with modern states, so it seems intuitively fundamental. We take it to mean that the legitimacy of the state derives from the power of the army (and police, etc). It feels like hard-eyed realism, seeing through the masks to the coercion beneath. But the real situation is reversed, and historically governments without a strong enough story of legitimacy are unable to create or sustain a monopoly on violence. (Note that violence may be an important part of that story, as with the American revolution).
To go back to Rome as an example of how this kind of “realism” can fail us, power in the republic being reduced to who could muster the most swords or the biggest mob wasn’t the true nature of government revealed, it was the end of the republic.
I’ve written way more than I intended, but I really enjoy talking about this stuff. I’m not saying that the monopoly on violence line is wrong exactly, but that taken too simply it can be misleading.
(I’m aware that the Rome example is fraught—after all it isn’t a modern state so we shouldn’t apply Weber’s terms. But for this purpose I think it works: it’s arguably the closest thing to a modern state in the pre-modern western world, and goes to my point about how power and authority are more complex than a “realistic” view that reduces it to violence.
Your interpretation of the phrase "inciting violence" is not remotely useful or common. Humans are not machines and language is not the same as computer code. There is social context implicit in the interpretation of the words we use.
No, but he needn't have sent people with guns at first. The first step in enforcing any law is just asking people to comply with it. The next step is putting fines on them. Only the last step involves the threat or at the very end, the use of force.
Given the common attitudes of those who purchase and keep AR-15s, perhaps the chance of them complying with any future legal ban on assault weapons is small, but in that situation, by not complying they would be committing a criminal act.
> if necessary.
Yes, if necessary. A lot of issues we treat as law enforcement problems can be resolved without bringing violence into the picture, but that's only possible if the systems are set up that way that encourages non-violent intervention first. Unfortunately, our current law enforcement systems treat many situations as having a high probability of requiring violence.
The use of force is certainly the last step, but the threat of force is present at any step. If the government sends you a letter asking you to do something, they're not "asking" you like your neighbor or your friend might ask you. They are telling you to do something, and it's clear to everyone that, if you don't convince them or a court otherwise, they absolutely will use force if you don't comply.
I don't mind the monopoly on violence (though I do believe that the state must enforce it much more: it can absolutely not tolerate challenges to that monopoly, and it must absolutely crush any violence against citizens), but it's not helpful to pretend that, there isn't a gun at the end of the line that gives the nicely worded letter its weight.
I also believe that the monopoly on violence is the least worst option we have for not having a society at war with itself.
But it's also blindingly obvious that it is the backstop for everything, not just enforcing weapons bans, but even things as mundane as speed limits. When the sign says max speed 55mph, that's asking. When the highway patrol pulls you over to give you a ticket - that's fining you. If you don't stop and they need to run you off the road and arrest you - that's the violence stage.
It's also sitting there behind every right we enjoy in free societies. Everything from property rights to civil rights are backstopped by the monopoly on violence. However, that doesn't mean we bring the visceral threat of violence into every property or civil rights dispute.
Just as important as the underlying threat of the use of the monopoly on violence is the judicious and restrained use of it only in the cases where it truly is proportional to the situation it is facing. Otherwise we get situations like the murder of George Floyd for merely using a counterfeit bill for payment at a convenience store.
The "asking" implied "we will give you a fine if you don't", and the fine implies "and we will come to your house and get you if you don't pay".
> However, that doesn't mean we bring the visceral threat of violence into every property or civil rights dispute.
Of course we do, we just do it via the state. I sue you with the knowledge that, if the court rules in my favor, the state will make you accept that ruling.
There is no pacifist society, and hiding the violence under a veil will do us no good. It's useful to be aware of reality, to know how the sausage is made, because it's much too easy to decide things if you close your eyes to these facts. Similar to starting a war that will not be fought by your children, deciding on a policy that will "ask" people to do something, adding "it's not like we're going to kick their door in..." is a problem: because that's exactly what is going to happen if they don't "voluntarily" comply. It's "hey, could you do me a favor? Please move your car, or else..."
I never suggested hiding violence under a veil, or claimed that there is a pacifist society, and I agree that we would all do well to understand the concept of the monopoly of violence and how it is the least bad way we know of to backstop all the rights we enjoy.
What I said is that we shouldn't start the process of day-to-day law enforcement with the use of violence, unless the individual being apprehended is demonstrably violent or threatening to be violent. I'm talking about the actual procedure of law enforcement, not debating theories about pacifism.
Actual violence should be reserved as a last resort only, not just for unarmed black men like George Floyd, but even for the people who refuse to surrender illegal firearms. They should all be given a chance to comply with the law without escalating things to an actually dangerous situation.
And this needn't be a partisan issue by the way. Sen Rand Paul(R) has introduced legislation to ban no-knock warrants [1], which are prime example of how police often use violence upfront in circumstances that don't require it.
1. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/11/rand-paul-bill-end-...
Well, it depends. Maybe you've declared bankruptcy in the mean time, and the fine might be wiped out as a result. And if you're unwilling to declare bankruptcy, doesn't that mean you have some valuable property in your name? So the state is exerting violence on your behalf just as much, by enforcing your rights to that property.
If you're speeding and won't even stop when police tries to pull you over, you're putting other users of the road at severe risk. From those other users' POV, you were being violent to them, and running you off the road is the lesser evil.
> Everything from property rights to civil rights are backstopped by the monopoly on violence.
Even that is not so clear to me. ISTM that humans have an inherent desire to defend their possession of whatever they regard as their property, as well as the social standing ("civil rights") of people they care about - including by force. So even the basic government function of managing and enforcing property rights need not involve any initiation of violence, compared to the possibly-chaotic and unregulated violence that was already inherent in the basic notion of property, or civil standing/honor, or whatever.
I think we're in agreement here: the use of violence must be proportional to the actual threat, so running you off the road is justified here. If we're not agreeing, then please explain what I'm missing.
Or they could simply add a charge to your conviction if you shoot someone, because guns would be illegal.
Just because they're illegal doesn't suddenly mean they'll be taken by force. That is such a huge mental jump.
What do you think happens when you don't pay that fine?
You will be jailed for whatever you want to want to call it -- contempt of court, tax fraud, whatever, but EOD, if you don't pay the cash, you end up in jail. And putting you in jail (if you do not wish to comply) will be armed police.
I don't understand how this is complicated.
How do you make the adamantly noncompliant comply? You can ask nicely, you can threaten, you can stomp your feet, and if that doesn't work...then what?
The point about gun control is that it's not owning the gun, it's _using_ the gun. There'd be additional penalties if you shot someone!
Sure you can, and we do all the time, we lock them in cages.
But we have a whole set of other measures - fines, penalties, negotiations, loss of benefits - and institutions to enforce them before ever calling upon the actual violence provided by the monopoly for a reason: so that most common societal infractions never need to escalate to the point of violence.
The brain gets wired to accept and try make some sense of the contradictions , where there are none. That is why we argue about every single little thing in the public sphere: Because there is no base set of morals or axioms that we can use to derive more complex ones to address complex situations.
None of this is any different from armed robbery. Of course the bank robbers just ask with a note first. The threat of violence is still the same, which is why there is a huge burden on the state to prove it’s necessary.
This comes across as wealth apologism. If a wealth tax is theft through a monopoly on violence, then all tax is theft through a monopoly on violence.
Singularly applying this concept as a the negative of a wealth tax, while ignoring the rest of taxes, is biased towards the wealthy.
Do you feel a cop's post threatening to beat the shit out of someone in a plausibly legal fashion stays up, but not that same post from a non-cop?
The government is comprised of people. Pointing to individual actors in that group seems sensible since "government" is not some autonomously system but a system composed of individuals who direct the actions of the group.
Yes, the use of force is implicit in all law, but the other is a direct explicit threat of force.
Is proposing any law a threat of force? They're all backed the same way.
How can we even do journalism if we are deleting the sources quoted?
Also, it’s trivial to take screenshots or otherwise archive the page even if Facebook takes it down.
1. Person A says X on Facebook.
2. Facebook removes Person A's post.
3. Journalist reports that Person A said X and that Facebook removed it.
Why would Person A suddenly disclaim X? They want X to be heard, which is why they said it on Facebook in the first place.
And again, there are ways to archive digital content even if its original source has been taken down.
Alternative: Journalist claims that Person A said Y and that Facebook removed it. Person A is unable to disclaim it because every time they repeat X it gets taken down and misreported as Y. The public are none the wiser.
How about you quote that line instead of paraphrasing it (like the grandparent did for the Trump tweet), and you'll find that there are some significant differences between literally threatening violence and announcing a regulation policy entirely in line with existing policy and a ton of proposed legislation.
How do you know Facebook will not do that, when Twitter has already done exactly that?
"Someone should go beat those people up" is an incitement to violence because the intended message is to encourage the listener to go beat those people up.
"If those people don't stop misbehaving, I will send the police to stop them" doesn't incite violence; it merely warns or threatens the use of one's legal power to directly order violence.
Government officials make these kinds of statements all the time. For example, consider this tweet from NYC mayor Bill de Blasio (https://twitter.com/nycmayor/status/1255309615883063297):
> My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period.
Or, for another example, consider President George H.W. Bush's statement during the 1992 LA riots (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD_3NOIEk-0). In the statement, he discusses the thousands of federal law enforcement and military personnel that have already been deployed to the LA area before saying:
> And let me assure you: I will use whatever force is necessary to restore order. What is going on in L.A. must and will stop. As your President, I guarantee you this violence will end.
An incitement to public violence can be censored in the interest of preventing violence, but censoring statements from government officials does nothing to stop them from issuing orders to government personnel. Furthermore, if a government official states that they intend to exercise their official powers in some specific way, there is always a legitimate public interest in receiving that statement.
It's not the proper role of social media to provide commentary on whether an announced or threatened use of official government power is legal, moral, or practical. Facebook and Twitter are not in the business of deciding questions of constitutional law.
When a govt official threatens violence for inherently nonviolent acts (even if they're illegal), that is a threat of violence that has nothing to do with law enforcement. It is assuming a crime and that the crime requires violence to be stopped.
In fact, the core concept of the protests in the US right now is that violence is not legal solvely because law enforcers commit it in the pursuit of law enforcement.
Isn't this only the case if the response to a violation is violence?
> carries the threat of an officer with a gun using force against the alleged violator.
Yes. This appears to be the observed reality.
> They don't draw any distinction between lawful and unlawful violence
Sounds correct. It's still violence. Advocating for it is still advocating for violence. Maybe if those with this power of lawful violence showed themselves responsible in its application, we wouldn't be here, but they didn't, and we are.
They also have the middle ground option of putting a warning on things and leaving them up.
That will work for some time, but eventually there will be posts that will be so egregious that they'll be pressured to delete/hide them.
The nice thing is that then they aren't censoring. People are able to see what is being suppressed or hidden if they are interested. I think it is good to have nuance built into the tools.
This degree of power doesn’t comes without strings attached. They have a responsibility to society at large. At this scale, you don’t get a pass because you are a structured as a corporation.*
The very least is to prevent Facebook being used as a tool to amplify violence and genocide. Honestly, given the atrocities that have been effected through their platform [1], this seems like a very timid step.
* If they don’t start to accept this accountability, it will ultimately be forced upon them by society and governments across the world.
[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/tech...
In the next 6 months, there will surely be a post or series of posts from one or many politicians where their choice of what is deemed "inciting violence or suppressing voting" will be, mildly put, controversial. These situations are not clear cut, and Facebook will be in the unenviable position of having to decide what is a political "truth" in a fraught political environment.